Searching for that lost inspiration, I stumbled onto a question that has been with me for a long time; a question that perhaps chases all of us : why ? I got to the question in a very unusual way.
I saw a TED Talk, about 20 mins long given by a guy about productivity while I was looking at interesting titles. He talked about something he defines to be the 'golden circle' What ? How ? and Why ? with why ? at the center and the rest following the order to the periphery. He argued that most of us went from What ? to How ? and on to Why ? and mostly never made it to Why? because we stuck with what we know, what ? While great communicators start with why ? and proceed outwards. This resonated with people of similar values and motives and brought all of them together.
I don't know how true this paradigm is, but its sure worth giving a bit of thought to. So this stayed at the back of my mind. Meanwhile I had been the group leader of something and it was going pretty bad with very low amount of cooperation between us. I realized that among us we knew what we were doing and how we were doing it but not much idea about why we were doing it ! All of our Why?'s were weak or superficial: there was nothing that resonated with us and made us move. Thinking about this and the possible ways in which our work could affect others not only gave a great insight about what we were doing but also part of answer to the question 'Where art thou ? My inspiration ?'.
In the work that was making me feel uninspired, even though the particulars interested me there was no holistic view or idea. We were just making a product that might be helpful to a few people free of cost, it did not add to our worldview only to our skills. Let us see if I'll be able to find a worthwhile reason !
That solves part of the mystery. Now I can continue my search for the rest of the answer with a considerably lighter heart :D
I saw a TED Talk, about 20 mins long given by a guy about productivity while I was looking at interesting titles. He talked about something he defines to be the 'golden circle' What ? How ? and Why ? with why ? at the center and the rest following the order to the periphery. He argued that most of us went from What ? to How ? and on to Why ? and mostly never made it to Why? because we stuck with what we know, what ? While great communicators start with why ? and proceed outwards. This resonated with people of similar values and motives and brought all of them together.
I don't know how true this paradigm is, but its sure worth giving a bit of thought to. So this stayed at the back of my mind. Meanwhile I had been the group leader of something and it was going pretty bad with very low amount of cooperation between us. I realized that among us we knew what we were doing and how we were doing it but not much idea about why we were doing it ! All of our Why?'s were weak or superficial: there was nothing that resonated with us and made us move. Thinking about this and the possible ways in which our work could affect others not only gave a great insight about what we were doing but also part of answer to the question 'Where art thou ? My inspiration ?'.
In the work that was making me feel uninspired, even though the particulars interested me there was no holistic view or idea. We were just making a product that might be helpful to a few people free of cost, it did not add to our worldview only to our skills. Let us see if I'll be able to find a worthwhile reason !
That solves part of the mystery. Now I can continue my search for the rest of the answer with a considerably lighter heart :D
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